


That's A Door Then

by WaldosAkimbo



Series: Quick and Dirty Good Omens Crack or Drabbles [10]
Category: Good Omens (TV), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, crossover crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo
Summary: A door appears in the bookshop that opens up to strangers from a ruined world.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Quick and Dirty Good Omens Crack or Drabbles [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789003
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	That's A Door Then

**Author's Note:**

> Messy crack fiction crossover with Good Omens and The Magnus Archives? Absolutely.

“It’s like you’re begging to be buried in an avalanche.”

Crowley’s fingertips grazed the trifold, _nearly there_ , before his hand slipped on the stack and he wobbled. Threatened to spill over entirely and bring the shelf crashing down with him, if not for the earlier threat that if anything, _anything_ should happen to the books, he’d have something truly dreadful happen. Probably wouldn’t get to have lunch with Aziraphale, for a start. And maybe they wouldn’t talk to each other for a time, which was pure torture. One can like being alone for a time, but Crowley was never very good at it. He’d rather be alone with Aziraphale.

No, best avoid it.

Crowley caught the book and his knee against the wooden shelf and buckled while he hissed at the unruly mess, at the cobwebs in the corner of the shop that should be threatened with a feather duster later. After lunch. The take-out menu remained crammed in the top shelf for quote-unquote “safe keeping,” the little red corner waving at him, taunting him. He’d burn it dow— no. Not in the shop.

 _Let it go, Crowley_. He flexed his fingers out and forced out a nice long deep breath. Zen as fuck, that’s what. _Let it go._

“Right.” Crowley took another deep breath and turned around. “And you’re sure it has to be this place?”

“There’s a door here.”

“Because I know a better Thai place, if that’s really what you’re craving, though I could go Greek myself.” Crowley licked his chops and cursed the menu before climbing back down from the precarious stacks. “Falafel. Could be good, yeah? We – Aziraphale?”

“Over here,” he answered back dutifully, though he sounded a bit distracted.

Crowley slipped over, ready to put his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders and pull him away from the empty wall, except when he got closer, he noticed it wasn’t empty at all. It should be. It should go right up against the neighbor’s building and it should have another bookshelf taking up most of the real-estate there, but it wasn’t. It –

“When’d that get here?”

“I don’t know.” Aziraphale stayed perfectly still and Crowley decided he did indeed want to put his hands on him. Right on his shoulders. Give them a good solid squeeze so he knew exactly where he was in the world. Better yet when Aziraphale reached up and gripped his hand, gave it a squeeze back. “We should see where it goes!”

Well, _yes_ and _absolutely_. A strange door opens up where it shouldn’t, that just comes with questions attached right off the front. How? Why? Where? Who? What? Big favorites, those questions. When, too, but the when was basically “now” so it wasn’t as striking as the others.

“What if it’s dangerous?” Another question. “Are we sure we can get back if we go inside?” And another! The questions were piling up and Crowley’s skull was itching with want for answers.

“If we go together, I think we should be able to handle it,” Aziraphale said evenly, twisting enough to look over his shoulders at his bosom demon companion. “After all we’ve faced?”

“Yeah….” Crowley was just distracted enough – questions! So many questions! – before he looked down at Aziraphale properly and decided his cheek could do with a kiss. Perhaps Aziraphale wasn’t prepared, but he agreed soon after and wiggled his shoulders in apparent happiness. “Alright, but we’re not going empty-handed.”

“No?”

“No. Certainly not. Where’s your—”

Aziraphale stepped aside and pulled out a black umbrella from a stand near his desk and shook it upwards. Crowley’s words faltered and fell. No, that’s not what he meant. What did he mean? He meant…he meant….

“…torch!”

Aziraphale glanced at his umbrella again and it suddenly lit itself on fire, plain as you like. Crowley’s mouth buttoned back up and he gave a little appreciative nod. Not what he was expecting but?

“That’ll do.”

And they faced the door, together.

Except it seemed neither of them were making a move to open it. Neither of them made a move for an embarrassingly long time, staring at the door that shouldn’t be. Even Aziraphale got a bit fidgety and bumped his shoulder back into Crowley’s.

“Dear…would you….?”

“Me?”

“Well, I thought you might?”

He sighed, pulled himself up, and reached for the handle. “Right, course. Should be…I mean, it’s just a door. Not like…no. I got it.” He cleared his throat and touched the handle and it banged open as though a strong and violent wind had ripped through the shop. Nearly tugged them inside, drawing a little trail of angelic fire off Aziraphale’s umbrella into what looked like a hallway of mirrors. A long, long, _long_ hallway, that twisted off at the end, turning left, with no possible way to see how far it must go. Left should go to the street, but the stain of the hallway already felt otherworldly.

“Odd,” Crowley said succinctly.

“A bit.”

“That should….”

Aziraphale took a step forward when voices trickled down the hallway and Crowley tossed his arm across Aziraphale’s chest. Not like he could keep the angel from anything, but it was as much a show at protecting him as anything. Funny thing, protecting the original guardian of the eastern gate. Flaming sword and a – well. Umbrella. But still.

Either way, Crowley tapped a finger to his lips and tugged on Aziraphale’s elbow, only for Aziraphale to shout down the hallway, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Crowley winced.

The voices stopped.

And eyes began to open along the walls of the entryway into this impossible little hallway.

“That’s not normal for hallways, is it?” Crowley asked far too casually for the sight of _eyeballs_ just _opening up_ where _eyeballs_ should not be _opening up_. “Think they can see us?”

“I suspect they can.” Azirapahle was even calmer, considering he was someone made of eyeballs if you looked just on the other side of things. Of reality. “I wonder who they are looking for, though.”

“…nd there seems to be two of them.”

“Helen?”

“Well don’t look at me. I’ve never had a doorway go this way before. Would you like me to take the lead for you, then? Or will our Big Bad Beholder finally—”

“I don’t think they’re harmful.”

As the trio turned down the hallway, the one in the center with what looked like _too many eyes_ peeking across his forehead and cheeks and _throat??_ Suddenly stopped in front of his companion, taking his hand, and squeezing it. The reaction made sense only in so much as Aziraphale hoisted his flaming umbrella up on their arrival. It could be because the tall, er, creature next to them was a bit startling. Not quite coming into focus, with too many bones in her hands and legs and face. Hair that spiraled out of control and a laugh that vibrated too many times through the air.

“Ah, I stand corrected,” said the gentlemen in the middle. Mr. Eyeballs-Aplenty.

“Jon?”

“I don’t…know.” Oh, that was curious. Mr. Eyeballs – Jon – blinked and several eyes on the wall did the same.

“Are they Avatars? Desolation?”

“Not everything on fire is part of the Desolation,” Jon said with an air of fondness that was equal parts gentle, condescending, and bewildered. “Strange. This doesn’t…feel…well, it feels too….”

“Jon?”

“It doesn’t feel like the Apocalypse here.”

“I should think not,” Aziraphale said, startling the two gentlemen. Crowley had a strange suspicion that it would take something much, much, _much_ more bizarre to startle the woman. Creature. Woman. Thing. “We put a stop to that.”

“You what?” asked Jon and there was a strange static in the air, an old tape recorder crackling white-noise into their realities.

Crowley frowned, clenching his teeth. Oh, he didn’t like that. Felt like he was being peeled open, tacked onto a bright white piece of paper and looked at through a magnifying glass as layers were carefully stripped off himself. Naked. And then Too Naked. His true form laid out on the table, catalogued in pieces, with the stink of permanent marker notes circling him in a detailed diagram. Aziraphale must’ve felt much the same, with his own many heads and eyes blinking in and out of Crowley’s peripheral.

And then it stopped.

“What are you?” Crowley and Jon asked at the same time, in the same accusatory tone. They stepped forward, but their companions held their arm to keep them on their perspective sides of the weird hallway. “No, really, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but coming here talking about the Apocalypse and eyeballs and I don’t trust ‘em, Angel.”

“Well, we don’t have to trust them,” Aziraphale pointed out, still holding Crowley’s arm with one hand and the umbrella up with the other.

“Angel?” Jon’s gentle-looking companion squeezed Jon’s arm tighter, unintentionally mirroring Aziraphale and Crowley – Crowley had half a mind to look to his left and make sure they didn’t have a Spiral-warped Helen next to them. “Th-That’s…that’s impossible, right? Just a pet name?”

Jon’s face closed up. Or, well, several of the eyes closed up, leaving behind a mess of scars, most of them pock marks, though that gash across his neck looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and looked up at Helen, who was smiling too brightly through all of this.

“Wrong reality.”

“ _Reality_?”

“Yes, Martin, it seems…well, I’ll explain it later.” Jon sighed and lifted his hand – Jesus the guy had a lot of scars! Look at that! Burned to a crisp on his palm! – and gave them a little wave. “Sorry for intruding on your, uh…is that a bookshop?”

Aziraphale and Crowley glanced back together, which was rather foolish, all things considered. Turning your back on interdimensional traveling lunatics. But when they looked back, Jon wasn’t watching them with all his weird eyes and Helen wasn’t suddenly closer and ten feet taller and tearing off their faces and Martin wasn’t…well…okay, Crowley had no idea what threat Martin could be. He looked too snugly. Suppose a scary scarred man and his pet hallway monster should have a snugly sort to hold his hand and everything.

“It is,” Aziraphale answered while Crowley was lost in assumptions on people. “Would you like to come in?”

“What?” Crowley hissed.

“What?” Aziraphale shot back, his eyebrows crumpling together.

“We’d love to,” Jon said from the hallway and by the looks of them, with their tattered clothes and bruised faces and desperate eyes, that was the fullest truth he’d said, but even as Martin leaned forward, drawn in from the gentle warmth of Aziraphale’s shop, Jon held his hand and kept them in the hallway. “But we need to fix our own, uh, world? Existence? Sorry, it’s hard to…figure out what’s going on here. But we need to fix it. Sorry.”

That second sorry was absolutely for Martin, and was hardly the last he’d have to share with him. But Martin seemed to draw himself up, too, and nodded firmly.

“Right. Save our world first. Definitely.” He glanced back with what could best be described as puppy-dog eyes. “Any advice for fixing an Apocalypse?”

“Have the right boy,” Crowley said with a shrug.

“And conviction,” Aziraphale said. “And, honestly, a good book of prophecies will get you everywhere. Oh, and if you have to trade your faces, it’s best to do it right in the middle of fu—”

“Don’t think _that_ stopped the Apocalypse, Angel,” Crowley said sharply, nearly covering Aziraphale’s mouth. He laughed and squeezed Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Couldn’t hurt.”

Helen giggled again and again and again, reverberating down the hallway, as Jon nodded, though he didn’t seem impressed by the answers. Neither did Martin, from what it looked like, though he was smiling a bit. Perhaps it was just to be polite. He waved, too, which the others did not do, and they turned together as a unit and started walking back down the hallway, turning down the corner, their voices muffled and static-stained until there was the click of an old tape recorder, and the door suddenly sucked itself shut, melting back into the wall, and disappearing.

Aziraphale and Crowley stared at it for a bit. A while. A good long time, actually, even as Aziraphale slowly lowered his umbrella, which extinguished dutifully and was replaced back in the stand by his desk. Crowley didn’t dare touch the wall. He figured, in time, it would heal itself over with the bookshelf that should be in its place and he could forget about it. It might heal over his questions, too. He knew how to carry those aches, of not knowing, even if he hated them.

Instead, he turned around and went to climb back up and get the menu back out again. For real this time. “Unless you want Greek?”

“Beg your pardon?” Aziraphale asked, shaking himself out of his thoughts. He looked over as Crowley was crawling back up the stack of precariously arranged books and baubles and spread his hands out quickly. “Oh, do be careful, Crowley! That’s an original copy!”

“Of what? Your take out menu?”

But Aziraphale just snapped up a book while Crowley fetched and their afternoon tumbled on the way it should have without a door and a hallway.


End file.
